


The Heterodyne Boys and the Glass Dirigible

by willowoak_walker



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Klaus wants to be home for his birthday, Not Dammit Klaus for once, Wulfenbachs as an airship family, the Real Heterodyne Boys Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-20 18:09:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16142681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowoak_walker/pseuds/willowoak_walker
Summary: Someone is kidnapping constructs in an invisible dirigible. Fortunately, the Heterodyne Boys are on the case! The villains will be defeated, the victims rescued, and the day saved.Also Klaus will fall in a hole or crash a dirigible or something because he always does. But we love him anyway.





	1. Preparation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [misura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/gifts).



“They’re back!” Bill called from his seat on top of the cart. Barry continued his tuneless humming, absorbed in improving his portable healing engine, but Klaus looked up and stepped around the cart.

   Punch and Judy were not actually back yet, just barely visible at the edge of the forest between the Boys and the town, but they seemed unharmed.

   “Good,” Klaus said. “Whose turn is it for dinner?”

   “Mine!” Bill said, bouncing off the cart with his usual improbable agility. Klaus sighed.

   “Can I persuade you to not make it snails?” he said.

   “Snails aren’t in season, Klaus,” Bill said sternly. “You’ve always said that’s your favorite birthday present.”

   “My favorite birthday present,” Klaus started.

   “Will be if we get you home in time for it,” Bill finished. “I know. We’re working on it!” Klaus chuckled and ruffled his hair.

   “I know you are.” Klaus turned to the horses, checking them over. The one with the grey glass mane, Oreol, was trying to eat grass again. Klaus popped the panels on its neck open to clean the grass out of its gears.

   “Seriously,” he muttered, “Why did the asshole that made you have to be so good at programming and bad at design?”

   Oreol made what its creator had probably meant to be a whinny as Punch and Judy came up to the campsite.

   “We’ve got news!” Judy said. She dropped one of her bags beside Barry and headed over to where Bill was making promisingly normal smells at the fire. Klaus looked at Punch.

   “A kidnapper,” Punch signed. “With a clear dirigible.”

   “Huh,” Klaus said. He snapped the plates of Oreol’s neck back together. “That’s neat.” Punch nodded. Klaus shook his head. “I can’t ask them not to take down kidnappers just to get me home on time.”

   “We have two weeks,” Punch signed. He laid a massive hand on Klaus’ shoulder.

   “Thanks, Punch,” Klaus said. He squeezed the construct’s hand and turned to rummage through the bounty Punch and Judy had brought up from the town. “You can give us the full rundown over dinner.”

***

   “Who would build a glass dirigible?” Klaus wondered, lowering the binoculars.

   “Someone better at landing than you,” Bill said. Barry and Judy laughed.

   “Ha, ha,” Klaus said, “No, but really. Is this someone we know?”

   “Oh,” Barry said, “Hm. No markings?”

   “If there are,” Klaus said, raising an eyebrow, “They’re glass on glass. Clear glass.” He turned to Punch to see if he had anything to add. Klaus had missed the beginning of the sign. “Sorry, again?” he asked.

   Punch flicked an eyebrow and repeated himself.

   “Materials scientist, Punch says,” Klaus said.

   “There’s a Mongfish daughter who’s into glass,” Bill mused, rubbing his chin.

   “Just what we need,” Barry said, “More Mongfishes. They are such a pain, and they all have castles.”

   “Kidnapping constructs does actually sound like Mongfish behavior,” Lilith said, “They are very interested in biology, in general.”

   “Right,” Bill said, kicking open the door of the walking machine, “Costume time.”

   “Why not use us as bait?” Punch signed.

   “We want them to think they have something other than what they actually have,” Klaus said, “If we use you as bait, we need them to think you’re a kind of construct you aren’t.”

   “We’re not using Punch and Judy as bait!” Barry said, pulling his head out of the Big Box o’ Tricks to object. “Why would you even think that, Klaus!”

   “Because Punch suggested it,” Klaus said patiently. “You actually need to look at him, sometimes.”

   Punch shrugged massive shoulders. They’d had this conversation. The Boys never could look in one direction for more than two minutes.

   “Sorry, Punch,” the Boys chorused. Punch and Judy looked at each other and sighed.

   “How do you feel like having an extra arm, Klaus?” Bill asked. He’d put some kind of eyestalks on his head and was rigging them to follow movement. Klaus sighed.

   “I’d like to be symmetrical.”

   “We shouldn’t let Klaus look like a Class A anyway!” Barry said, “He should look mechanical, so they try magnets or something first.”

   “Fair enough,” Klaus said, and went to fish in the Big Box o’ Tricks for his own disguise.

   “Maybe you should stay with Punch and Judy,” Bill said. “So that you can come riding in to the rescue when we get the dirigible grounded.”

   “Oh, hell no,” Klaus said with his head in the Box. “If I let you both out of my sight, there's no telling what you’ll get up to.”

   “We are not letting you go into an enemy stronghold without some backup,” Judy said firmly.

   “Blah blah blah, last of the Heterodynes,” Barry muttered, “Blah blah duty to the family.”

   “Blah blah blah I like you and want you to live,” Klaus said.

   “Aw, Klaus, I didn’t know you cared!” Klaus knew that tone. Bill was grinning that Heterodyne grin that meant ‘this is mine and I will protect it’.

   You had to expect these things when traveling with a Spark, and Bill had done his best to keep it under control. A certain amount of leakage was…

   Actually, this was an interesting moment for that to leak out, Klaus was going to have to write it down. That was the difference between traveling with a pair of very dangerous Sparks for friendship and adventure and traveling with a pair of very dangerous Sparks for friendship, adventure, and science.


	2. Trap

   “This is stupid,” Klaus muttered. “We’re just going to wander around looking like the most mismatched set of constructs ever and hoping someone decides to kidnap and experiment on us.”

   “Yep!” Barry sprawled across the back of the wagon, impractical butterfly wings fluttering.

   “Basically,” Bill agreed, looking at Klaus with only his stalk eyes.

   “Can you actually see through those?” Klaus asked.

   “Nope!” Bill said cheerfully. “That’s why I made my real eyes look blind.”

   “I hate you both,” Klaus muttered. The metal casing covering his shoulders and hiding the stitches on his wrists was heating uncomfortably in the sun. This was a very stupid plan. The worst thing was, it was going to work. Heterodyne plans usually did.

   “Welp, there they are,” Bill said, cheerful as always. The sky was glinting in a vaguely starlike fashion, disconcerting in the daylight. The edges of the Glass Dirigible. It was almost totally invisible from below. That was some very good control of facets and refraction.

“Preparing to panic,” Klaus muttered, holding the reins of the dancing horses more firmly.

   “No seducing people to the side of good, brother!” Barry said. “We need to get Klaus home in time for his birthday!”

   “I would appreciate that,” Klaus said, and tried to calm the rearing horses. Or, well, pretended to. He could do this a lot better than he was. For one thing, the clank-horse Oreol was normally unflappable, even if it did eat grass.

   “But what if they try to seduce me?” Bill asked plaintively.

   “They will, won’t they,” Klaus muttered. “And you won’t do a thing about it.”

   “If someone tries to kiss you,” Barry said dryly, “Dodge.”

   Klaus’ upward glance caught some sparkling glassy things descending from the dirigible. Though they grew closer their shape did not become much more clear -- only that they were many-legged creatures, not falling but riding lines of glass as fine a spider-silk. Klaus actually tried to calm the rearing horses. Oreol’s metal neck clattered as it shook its head, and one of the silk-riders lopped it off. Klaus blinked for a moment, and then pulled out the gun under the wagon seat. The first of the silk-riders was already carrying Oreol’s head upward as its silk retracted, and three more were cutting the clank horse’s body away from the reins. Klaus fired into the centers of their translucent torsos, sending shards of glass flying in every direction. One clipped Klaus’ forehead and he pulled his goggles down. Whoops, Klaus had been supposed to panic. And remember to put his goggles on.

   Behind him, Barry yelped. Klaus spun, gun ready. Barry was fighting a good five silk-riders, with a ceramic knife in one hand and a leather one in the other. They were surprisingly effective — Bill’s metal sword wasn’t cutting the silk any faster.

   Klaus shot one of the ones attacking Barry, twice in quick succession, just to be sure. The glass shell of it exploded outward, leaving Barry’s exposed cheek with a bleeding scratch, but the silk-rider hung loose from its thread and oozed. Ew.

   Sharp fingers grabbed the back of Klaus’ neck, and he smashed backward with the butt of the gun. The silk-riders didn’t shriek or yelp, but the hand vanished, and Klaus hoped for a moment that he’d driven it off. But something sliced sharply into the small of his back. Klaus roared and shoved back with his gun, but he had already left the ground.

   “What, ho, old boy!” Bill yelled from where he, too, was being pulled into the sky. “Up we go!”

   “Remember the plan!” Klaus called.

   “Right, brother!” Barry yelled. “No kissing.”

   “Aww, really?” Bill tried the hang-dog look that worked so well on business owners who were about to double charge the Heterodyne.

   “No kissing,” Klaus and Barry yelled back as one.

   “Not that it ever works out like that,” Klaus muttered. Then the bottom of the dirigible opened and pulled them inside.

   Klaus flopped onto the floor of the docking bay as if unconscious, muscles limp and mouth half-open. Seeming vulnerable sometimes worked.

   But the docking bay was poorly lit despite being glass — the light must be refracted around the dirigible very carefully to keep it so invisible — and his pretense must not have worked. Or else these people had their plans already moving. He smelled something sickeningly sweet, and the darkness of the docking bay spread from his eyes into his mind and he actually was unconscious.


	3. Challenge

   “Well, well, well,” said someone in a familiarly gloating tone. “Look what we have here.”

   “Why, Demonica,” someone else said, “It seems to be a clutch of heroes, dressed up as victims.”

   “Oh, my darling sister,” Demonica said, “Whatever shall we do with them?”

   “They killed six of your spiders, dear, perhaps you should let the rest kill them?”

   “Oh, no, no,” Demonica said, “I do appreciate a good stress-test, and there hasn’t been anything to really give them a challenge in days. Maybe they’d like to fight some more, properly armed.”

   “Oh, I don’t know that they’d like it, but they did sneak up here under false pretenses, so I don’t think that matters.”

   “Snuck up here?” Bill said. Klaus mentally rested his face in his hands. He didn’t do it physically because a) he was pretending to be unconscious, and b) he was tied down. “Ladies, you brought us up yourselves! We protested the abduction — rather violently, in fact.”

   “Oh, pff!” said the one who wasn’t Demonica, “You were pretending to be constructs.”

   “Not illegal,” Bill pointed out.

   “Oh, I think it’s illegal to hide your beautiful face,” Demonica cooed. “You, I think, I have special plans for.”

   “Reaalllly,” Bill drawled. “And will I enjoy them?”

   “Oh,” Demonica said, “I do think you might.”

   “Not with the knowledge that my friends are being tortured,” Bill said. Good heavens, did he actually remember that they’d made him promise not to seduce people to the side of good?

   “Hmph,” Not-Demonica said, “Perhaps after I’ve worked on you for a little while you’ll be more interested.” 

   “What, really?” Demonica said, “Serpentina, darling, I didn’t expect such a lovely gift!”

   Serpentina must have shrugged. “I need a couple of things stress-tested, too. And knowing that if he doesn’t cooperate I’ll test these on his friends should make him pliable enough.” Glass tinkled, as if someone had stirred beads in a wineglass. Not an innocent sound in this context.

   “I’ll cooperate, I’ll cooperate,” Bill said hurriedly.

   “Goood boy,” Serpentina said. “Now come along.” Glass clinked again, and then people moved. Dresses swishing, Bill’s exaggerated limp. “Come along, spiders,” she added.

“That’s not one of the commands I built into them,” Demonica said. “They’re just  _ spiders _ .”

“So make them come,” Serpentina said.

Demonica sighed and said, “Follow.” There was further rustling and tinkling of glass, and … several … silk-riders moved. “Out the door,” Serpentina said. Bill’s limping steps and the swish of dresses moved into the hall, the silk-riders following.

The door tinked closed behind them.

   Klaus breathed slowly and just listened. He only heard one set of lungs beside his own. Carefully, he opened his eyes.

   “Why is it always Bill?” Barry complained. Alive and not in pain.

   Klaus let out that breath he had been holding. He shrugged as best he could in the restraints and didn’t say “because you’re a kid and I’m a construct.” Barry was technically a grown man, even if he was years younger than Klaus, and there were some things Mechanicsburgers just didn’t get.

   Like how most people didn’t eat Dyne snails or bugs.

   Or that most places regarded stitches as cause for embarrassment rather than pride. Mechanicsburgers were just different.

   “Anyway,” Barry said, “We need to get out of this, and I want a recipe for this glass.”

   “Yes,” Klaus said, and gave his left wrist the twist that broke the metal cuff covering it, popping out a diamond-tipped blade that could — given time — cut through the glass. “I think I’m going to do some tensile testing,” he said, and shoved his hands up into the glass cuffs holding them to the table.

   Nothing.

   Well, then. That’s what the diamond was for. Klaus and Barry lay there in silence, listening to the sounds of the dirigible and working themselves free. The glass dirigible didn’t sound like a normal dirigible. Too high-pitched in its shifting creaks and pops.

   It sounded fragile.

   Klaus pulled against the shackle again and it  _ finally  _ broke. The shards cut into Klaus’ skin as he lifted his hand from them, the broken metal cuff around his wrist not protection enough.

   Klaus rolled his torso to work on his other hand. The shackle popped faster when he was working from the outside, but he still got his share of cuts from the broken glass. Barry was still silent.

   “Barry?” Klaus said.

   “Didn’t want to disturb you,” Barry said, but his eyes were over-wide and concerned.

   “I’ll be fine,” Klaus said. “I’ll wrap these up in a moment and you can run that portable healing engine of yours over them when we’re done here.” Barry chuckled.

   “I’m holding you to that,” he said. Klaus broke the shackles on his feet without much trouble. His increasing experience and solid boots got him out only slightly more scratched.

   “I’m going to see if they broke all my lockpicks,” Klaus said, and pulled them out of his boot. They were fine. “Ah-hah.”

   “You need to wrap your wrists,” Barry said urgently. Klaus sighed, humoring him. There were bandages pointedly set out on a table, next to all the very threatening tools of torture.

   Which were glass.    

   “Look, a non-glass material,” he said, holding one bandage up before wrapping it around his wrist.

   “Good,” Barry said. “I can’t imagine glass bandages working very well.”

  Klaus chuckled. “I would have said the same about a glass dirigible.”

   “Fair,” Barry said. He said nothing else while Klaus picked the locks on his shackles.

   “What are we planning to do to these two?” Klaus asked eventually. Barry was never so quiet.

   “It’ll depend what Bill’s managed to learn from them,” Barry said. “They’ve been doing this for a while, they’ve had time to build up resources. We’ll have to make sure they can’t just start up again when we leave.”

   “Huh,” Klaus said. “That makes things harder.”

   “Naaah,” Barry said. “We’ll just drive the dirigible into the mountain. You’re good at that.” He grinned. Klaus sighed.

   “That’s wasn’t funny the first time. Besides, they must have had a batchhouse to make enough glass to build this in the first place.”

   “I just don’t understand it,” Barry said, hunting through the torture tools for something big enough to be a weapon. “How can someone who’s so good at driving on the ground and comes from a family of famous dirigible makers be so bad at flying?”

   “How can someone who’s so good at building weapons and comes from a family of notorious conquerors be so good at being a hero?” Klaus asked. He’d been traveling with the Heterodyne Boys for years; he got to say things like that. It was a hard-won privilege. He took a better look at what Barry was building. “That looks like a deathray, but I’m sure it’s not.”

   “I wanna be scary,” Barry muttered, stabbing a scalpel into the barrel of the not-deathray. “I’m tired of this bullshit.”

   “Fair,” Klaus said. He tucked his lockpicks back into his boots and picked up a glass heating machine and a poker. There were some interesting possibilities, and Barry had started Heterodyning, giving the room the air of focused work that meant they wouldn’t be doing anything else until he was done.

   One of the silk-riders came in, and Klaus slammed it against the door. Barry was still humming. “No interrupting,” Klaus scolded the creature, “Unless you want to be experimental materials.” The silk-rider twitched glass limbs, but didn’t speak. Serpentina had said they were just spiders. And spoken to them in the dialect of Russian she’d used with her sister. “If you understand me, bring your arms up,” Klaus said in that dialect. Its flailing didn’t change.

   “Last chance,” Klaus said, “If you understand me, bring your arms up.” Nothing. Klaus smashed it against the wall until it stopped twitching. “Not people,” he called over his shoulder to Barry.

   “Nice,” Barry said. “Stand aside, Kolyasha.” Klaus groaned at the nickname, but stood aside.

   “Klaus isn’t even a Slavic name,” he said, and Barry’s gun fired. The door shattered, collapsing into a pile of glistening shards. A few bounced off Klaus’ arm without so much as nicking him. “Huh,” he said. “The shards aren’t sharp?”

   “It worked!” Barry said. He grinned at Klaus, striding forward across the glittering remains of the door as if across the drawbridge to a conquered castle. He was still a Heterodyne, even here, even now, even a hero.

   “I’m going to want to look at that later,” Klaus said. Barry’s designs were always interesting.

   “We can try to save you some pretty things from these people, too,” Barry said. “As extra birthday presents.”

   “Extra presents?” Klaus said absently, looking down the hall behind them for any silk-riders.

   “Our main present is getting you home on time!” Barry said. “We were only a week away, and we have two.” Klaus threw the poker through three silk-riders. The fourth flailed spider-legs and shrieked. Klaus ran to it and threw it into the wall. It stopped.

   “Thanks, Barry,” Klaus said.

   “Of course!” Barry said. “I’m going to shoot down this door and see what’s in here.”

   “Right,” Klaus said, and retrieved his poker. “I’ll be right there.” Barry shot out the door without waiting for him.

   “Hi, I’m Barry Heterodyne,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you all. We’re here to rescue you!” Klaus leaned around him to look into the room. Three constructs, matching the description of the missing farm workers. Well, except for the glass replacing any parts that should have been metal.

   “Heterodyne?” one said.

   “The hero ones,” Klaus said, leaning around Barry. The constructs cheered, raising their flesh arms. Klaus was going to have to have a look at the sickles. They didn’t seem to have the functionality that someone needed in an arm.

   “That’s right!” Barry said, “My friends, we need your help! By the accounting of our allies, many other people were kidnapped by these scurrilous villains!” 

Klaus touched his shoulder absently and stepped aside, further into the hall. Jokes aside, Klaus was a Wulfenbach, and he had taken his first airship trip at nine. The bridge would be toward the front and top of the dirigible. Klaus walked slowly down the hall. 

Barry directed his new minions to search for the rest of the captured constructs — doubtless this would be a passing loyalty, if only because the farmworkers had homes they wanted to return to. In any case, Klaus had his own priorities. He listened with an airman’s ears to the movement of the wind beyond the glinting glass. There were people in some of the rooms he passed, but he put that from his mind. Barry would handle it, or he could go back.

   The glass was strange, not like the creaks and whines of metal and wood. But, yes. Klaus had it in his ears now. He was going toward the tail of the ship.

   Damn.

   Klaus broke down the nearest door with his poker. The poker rang softly, but remained intact. Barry laughed. “What?” Klaus snapped.

   “You look completely gobsmacked, buddy!” Barry beamed at him. “That’s a very nice poker, sturdier than the door, but I made you something nicer. See?”

   Klaus took the … “This isn’t a deathray, Barry, is it?”

   “No!” Barry said. “It’s another glass-breaker. Just deathray-shaped.”

   “You do that a lot,” Klaus said, stepping into the room.

   “Well, I know you know how to use a deathray,” Barry said, and shot through another door in the side of the hall. Klaus stepped farther into the hall toward the tail, peering into the deeper dark. Behind him, he heard the distinctive sounds of a Heterodyne organizing a constructs’ rebellion.

   Ahead, the equally familiar sound of an airship’s engine.

   “I doubt they could make that of glass,” Klaus muttered. 

The engine room was dark, as dark as the rest of the dirigible, shaded by the refractions that made it so close to invisible. The people working there didn’t seem troubled. Klaus would like to learn how they’d managed that.

   But yes, there were pieces of metal in the whirring shaking mass of the engine. A modified Fiera Five, it looked like. The Fiera Five wasn’t big enough for a ship this big, and they’d just stuck on another turbine. Klaus frowned. Fieras weren’t Wulfenbach work, but he hated to see any engine misused like this.

   That wasn’t what he was here for. He looked around the room. The engineers, intent on their work, ignored him. Yes, there it was. The crawl ladder. A direct way from the engines to the bridge, running right alongside the connections for the controls. Mostly, it was intended to make it possible for someone to access the connections without having to tear the ship apart, but it would bend to Klaus’ need too.

   He climbed in.

   Behind him, in the engine room, no-one objected.

   An interesting fact. Klaus considered it as he crawled. He’d seen no minions except the silk-riders, the engineers, and the kidnapped constructs, none of whom really counted. The silk-riders were stupid, the engineers expressed no interest in anything beyond the engine, and the kidnapped constructs were, well, kidnapped. And caged up.

   Glass was not an ideal material for making living things out of.

   Or airships. Klaus wasn’t sure if he’d cut himself on a chip in the wall of the crawl ladder or if the injuries on his wrist from breaking out were reopening, but he could smell the blood. Or maybe that wasn’t him.

   Klaus rolled over — a tight fit in this small space — and began working loose the access panel just beyond his head. Just as he thought he’d gotten it loose, someone above shrieked and slammed it back down again. Klaus sighed.

   He pulled his glass gun and shot out the floor above him. He stood up in a shower of glass fragments. Someone was holding a knife to Bill’s throat, oh lovely. Two beautiful women stood in the room, staring at him. One held the knife to Bill’s throat, the other was holding some piece of glass that did not look like a weapon. Not that that meant much.

   Look at what Klaus was aiming at Bill’s captors now.

   “Stalemate,” the one with her knife to Bill’s throat — Serpentina — said. “You attack us, we kill him.”

   “Ladies,” Bill said, “Surely we can work this out.”

   “Surely,” Demonica said, putting down her piece of glass, “After all, we all have so very much to lose.”

   Klaus shot, shattering the glass sword she had been reaching for. Demonica gasped. The arming-rack the sword had been hanging from also collapsed into shards, and the armor disintegrated.

   “What a clever man,” Demonica cooed, “To make something so nasty out of what he found in our airship! Serpentina—“ But Bill had been looking over Klaus’ shoulder for long enough that he wasn’t surprised. Klaus was perfectly capable of shooting behind himself without losing focus on the threats in front.

   By the squelching that went with the tinkling, that had a been a silk-rider, not an inanimate trap.

   “Ladies,” Bill said again, “Your airship has been infiltrated. Your prisoners roused against you.” That was a safe bet, even if none of the freed constructs had gotten here yet. It was Barry’s favorite tactic, and one of which Klaus heartily approved. “It might be time to give in.”

   “NO!” Serpentina said, voice staticy with Spark. “I have not finished my experiment! The data— they will be proof, PROOF!” She’d removed her knife from Bill’s throat to gesture. Klaus shot it in the same moment that Bill swiped her legs out from beneath her, throwing her to the ground. She screamed, and her sister attacked Bill with her bare hands. Klaus dropped the glass-breaker and joined the wrestling.

   It was a fairly normal fight, except that the Mongfishes didn’t carry as many poisons as the nobles Klaus was used to. Barry broke the door in and started yelling about wasting time flirting at almost exactly the moment Klaus got Demonica pinned down. His irritation was cut off by the horrible shrieking sound of a rotor getting jammed. Klaus dropped his captive and pushed past Barry to run to the bridge.

   The man at the helm was wearing the Mongfish colors but didn’t have the house crest. Klaus took stock of the situation. The helmsman was steering quite calmly toward a the cliff on the south side of the Silenced Peak. Klaus pinched his nose and knocked the idiot unconscious.

   He grabbed the wheel and turned starboard. The ship responded more sluggishly even than the shrieking of the jammed rotor justified.

   There were reasons people didn’t make glass dirigibles! Admittedly one of them was that most people wouldn’t think of it.

   Klaus dragged one of the —glass— communication tubes over with one hand and yelled “Engine status?” down it. He kept the other hand on the wheel. It twisted against his grasp.

   The reply was distorted, but it sounded like “Need to take rotor three offline.”

   Klaus yelled “Trying for a controlled crash,” and dropped the tube. It didn’t retract properly. He put that hand back on the wheel to get a better grip and focused on getting them turned away from the cliff, avoiding the weird circling winds that drove ships into the rock-face.

   One of Klaus’ brothers had read the Odyssey and started calling it Charibdis, because it was a whirlpool that killed people.

   Well, it wasn’t go to kill Klaus’ friends. Or the innocent victims of the kidnappings, either. Klaus was fine with it killing the Mongfishes. Bill and Barry probably weren’t but they’d live. Klaus was going to make sure of it.

The whining of the jammed rotor stopped as the engineers got it offline at last. The ship was wallowing, overstressing its remaining rotors. Klaus fumbled for an intercom. Ah, there, probably. He picked it up.

“All hands, emergency, drop ballast. Drop all ballast. Do not use lifeboats.” His voice echoed through the bridge’s open door. Excellent, that _had_ been the intercom. The ship began lifting as ballast dropped, and Klaus breathed a sigh of relief. They still weren’t flightworthy, but a soft landing...

Through the door he heard screaming. Klaus groaned. He couldn’t turn aside just now, they were still too close to Charibdis. The Boys yelled, the yells that were half-a-step and a careful accent from the Jägers “Ve Hunt!”. Klaus sighed. Someone was getting away. They too often did.  

Someone must have seized Barry’s glass-breaker, because it fired from behind Klaus. He winced and ducked reflexively. A second shot, and the front window shattered. Klaus raised his hand against the glass shards being flung into his face by the wind. Dammit, why was he never wearing goggles when he wanted them?

“Klaus! Are you all right?” Barry, from behind him.

“I’m fine,” Klaus yelled back. He had to turn his head away from the wheel to have hope of being heard. Barry nodded and Klaus turned back to his job. The yells behind him were currently not his problem. A toggle flipped beside the wheel. Lifeboat away. Dammit!

He grabbed for the intercom again. “Do not, repeat, do  _ not  _ use lifeboats! Winds are unsafe.” He dropped it again and pulled the ship hard to port.

   “They’re getting away,” Bill yelled over the wind in the broken cockpit. “Klaus, try to crash us gently, I’m going to take another lifeboat and go after them!”

   “Let them go,” Klaus yelled back. He knew these mountains. They were barely a day’s ride from Wulfenbach. If he could keep them up until they passed the Silenced Peak, he should be able to land the dirigible in the Grey Field, which burnt up every couple of months  _ anyway,  _ and so wouldn’t take any permanent harm from it.

   “What?” Bill yelled back. “I’m going to go get them. We can’t let them get away with this!” Klaus glanced backward at Barry, who had found a coil of honest-to-god non-glass sailor’s rope somewhere and was looping it up into a lasso. Klaus nodded and turned back into the wind. Barry must have caught his brother, because Bill yelped.

   “What was that for, Barry?”

   “We don’t have the time for a full-on attack on the Mongfish family,” Barry said, reeling his brother back in like a fish. “And that’s what that would be.”  

   “We’re flying too close to Charibdis,” Klaus added. “Taking a smaller ship out there is suicide.”

   Bill was silent. 

   “I’m sorry, brother,” Barry said. “It’s too late already to save them.”

   Bill sighed, the sigh that went with rubbing his hands over his face and making compromises. “I’ll try to warn them.”

   “All right,” Barry said. “Klaus, where should I have the people be to be safest in the crash?”

   “Near the port hatches,” Klaus said, ignoring the noises of Bill rapidly constructing something. “They’re going to need to get out almost instantly and then hunker down while the field burns over.”

   “Okay,” Barry said, and squeezed Klaus’ arm. Probably his shoulder was too high up for easy reach. Klaus chuckled, but the sound was lost under Bill’s shouts. Klaus honestly had no idea what was worth saying at the moment, but Bill was a better man than Klaus would ever be.

   The little ship the Mongfishes had escaped in continued its course right toward the cliff. Klaus focused on saving the dirigible he was flying. Two rotors was not enough even all the ballast -- and one of the lifeboats -- dropped. “Bill,” he interrupted.

   “Klaus?”

   “We need to dump everything heavy we can.” There was a slight pause. Klaus considered looking over his shoulder.

   “All right,” Bill said. He left the cockpit, leaving Klaus alone in familiar skies with the wind roaring.

   Almost home.


	4. Coda

“Hooray!” Barry yelled when the fire from the crash had finished flashing through the Grey Field and died in the streams surrounding it.

“Hooray?” Klaus said dubiously. 

“We all made it!” Klaus chuckled. 

“All the victims?” 

Barry sobered. “Some of them were … well. All the ones who  _ could  _ have survived did.” 

Klaus nodded. “We’re going to need to meet up with Punch and Judy, find some way to get all these people back to their homes--”

“And back into health,” Barry interjected.

“And back into health,” Klaus agreed.

“And get you home for your birthday.” Barry said. Klaus smiled. 

“That won’t be too hard,” he said, and leaned back against his sheltering rock.

“No?” Barry leaned in. “Buddy, come  _ on _ , what aren’t you telling me?”

“Firespotting is one of an airman’s sacred duties,” Klaus said, and stood up. “I’m going to see what we can salvage while Bill’s moping.”

When one of the rescued constructs yelled ‘Ship ahoy, wing and castle,’ Klaus’ mouth twitched up. 

Almost home.

  
  
  


Later:

   “I need to tell you something, Mama.”

   “Yes, dear?”

   “Glass is a shitty thing to make a dirigible out of.”


End file.
